Author Archives: Kathy Hanawalt

In Loco Parentis

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On the morning of April 20, 1999, I stood inside the Student Union Building at the University of Puget Sound and watched the images on the two TVs with captions blaring “School Shooting in Colorado.”  At first, I wondered what a “school shooting” even meant – back then, this phrase was not a part of our everyday lexicon.  Then I wondered what school it could be.  Finally, it slowly dawned on me that this was my high school, Columbine High School, from which I had graduated only ten months earlier.   Those were my friends, running out of the school with their hands up.  Two days later, I flew to Colorado to be with my community. I attended vigils, memorials and funerals.  I sat with grieving and scared friends. I hugged teachers and neighbors.  

I am now exactly twice as old as I was on that day in 1999.   So for half of my life, I have lived with the idea that schools are not always a safe place to be.  But for fifteen years of my life, I have worked in schools as a teacher, coach, supervisor, mentor and volunteer.  For six years of my life, I have sent my daughters to schools.  I will always be a part of schools and they will always be a part of me.

So what does being a Columbine alum mean for me as a parent?  It means that I send my daughters to school with a blessing every single day.  It means that I have to hold back my fear and tears when there’s a fire alarm when I’m volunteering in my daughter’s preschool class as I imagine what their experience would be like if this were the “real thing.”  It means that my stomach turns when my daughters play “lock down” as part of their imaginary play.   It means that I wonder when they’ll understand that the event they read about in their history books happened at my high school.

And what does being a Columbine alum mean for me as a teacher?   After all, this is a blog about being a teacher, where “policy meets practice.”  One might assume with the ongoing school shootings and the talk about how teachers might play a part in stopping them, that I might have given this some serious reflection, that I would have a detailed plan for what I would do in such an event.  But I don’t.  Honestly, I am way more worried about the immediate and real dangers of poverty, sexism and systemic racism that deeply affect my students’ everyday experiences.

But there is one thing I know as a teacher, one policy that I know will be true if it’s ever the “real thing” at my school.  In loco parentis.   Latin for “in the place of a parent.”   This is the idea that teachers and other responsible adults will act on behalf of the student when the parent is not available. There have been two occasions in my career when my schools had legitimate lockdowns.  My parental instincts kicked in.  I jumped into full mom mode, calming and protecting my kids.   It was only after the events were over and I was by myself that I could fully reflect on and pour out my emotions and fears that had been triggered in those moments.

Every day, I am thankful that I send my daughters to teachers who care for them in my place for the 6 ½ hours that I am away from them.  Every day, I try to love on my students with the fierce love of a parent: I push, challenge, console, support, feed, and advocate for all of my students.   And every day, I hope that the doctrine of in loco parentis is engrained deeply enough that I will know how to act and what to do should the nightmare of April 20, 1999 ever echo in the halls outside of my classroom.

Hiding in the Classroom

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As a teacher, I often hide.

Sometimes I hide from my students – during my plan period, I might sit far away from the door in a corner desk, just so I can get work done with no distractions.  Sometimes I hide from my colleagues – last year, my first year back in the classroom after five years, I taught in a part of the school removed from the main building, so it was easy to keep to myself, away from any drama and school gossip.  This physical isolation also meant few district visitors, drop ins from other staff members, and general glances in from adults in the hallways.  This year, in a new room, much closer to the action, I feel more connected to the culture of the school, but I also feel more exposed.

One of the values of my school is “visibility.”  We seek to make our students’ thinking visible (especially through the work of Ron Ritchhart and Project Zero’s Visible Thinking work) and we are working towards making our own work more visible to each other.  And this visibility often means vulnerability.  Throughout the day, even though I project a strong, outgoing personality, I often feel vulnerable in front of my students.  On some days, it takes all my energy to put myself together to make it through the day, and I work to hide that vulnerability from students.   So being visible and vulnerable in front my colleagues is another level of challenge.

For me, this visibility is part of my daily teaching life as I co-teach all my classes with an Exceptional Needs Specialist.  (See my post on co-teaching.)  I can’t hide, even when I want to.  I can’t hide the days when I’m inconsistent in disciplining students.   I can’t hide when I don’t have a full “bell to bell” lesson ready, and the kids are packing up early.   I can’t hide how few kids turn in homework assignments for the class.  I can’t hide when I resort to calling on the same students.   I can’t hide when I move on with the next skill, even when I know some students are still struggling.  I can’t hide when I am just in a bad mood and I don’t want to be there that day.

This commitment to visibility stepped up even more this year as our school has teachers take turns serving as an l Instructional Coach each Wednesday, coming into classes for short observations.  (See Hope Teague-Bowling’s post on this practice.) These new visitors bring a heightened sense of vulnerability.  My co-teacher knows my strengths and weaknesses already – but what are these new folks going to think?

During each of these visits, I felt embarrassed at different moments… why did that kid have to whisper about me to his friend during class?   Why did that one group of students show such reluctance in participating in our activity?  Why did a handful of kids pick this day to be so tired?

But for all my vulnerability and flushed red cheeks, I realize that all of this visibility makes me a more effective teacher.   

My co-teacher helps me recognize when I am inconsistent with discipline so that I can be more consistent.   She helps me diagnose why our homework return rate is low and problem solve so that we can improve it.  She takes over the heavy lifting on the days when I’m just not all there so that our students can continue to learn.

These Instructional Coaches script what the students is saying about me so that I can talk with my administrator about appropriate next steps.   They encourage me to see the reasons why a group might not want to participate so that I can engage them the next time.  They remind me of all the beauty in the groups that did participate so that I will be encouraged to continue and give the activity another try another day.   They remind me that their students are tired too so that I don’t feel so alone in the work.

And perhaps that‘s the reason for visibility.  To remind us that we are not alone.  The latter statement can be taken as a strong reminder that we have a duty to each other and our students to be effective educators.  We are all watching each other – we won’t let anyone slide.   And the statement can be taken as an encouragement that we are partners in the work and that many others are facing the same challenges.

There’s no need to hide.

Snapshots of Co-Teaching

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Education

When I returned to classroom teaching after five years at home, there was a lot of newness for me. New building, new Common Core standards, new SMART boards. But perhaps the biggest “new” was the teaching model I’d be using: co-teaching.   My high school, like buildings throughout my district and country, are using co-teaching as the means to support inclusion of students with IEPs in general education courses. This means that a certificated specialist (sometimes an ELL teacher, sometimes a Special Education teacher) is paired with a general education teacher; the two teachers work together to support the needs of all students in the classroom, ideally using a mixture of the six approaches outlined by Dr. Marilyn Friend, one of the leading advocates of the co-teaching movement.

Fortunately for me, I was paired with an incredible educator last year, Monique LeTourneau, and we continue our partnership together this year. There are many resources out there to explain what co-teaching is and advice on how to make it work for teachers and administrators. But for the purpose of this post, I’d like to give you some snapshots of what co-teaching is like, a glimpse into what the policy looks like in practice in one classroom in one school in one city. With two teachers.

I.

It’s Wednesday night and I cram in a few last minutes of planning for the next week before my weekly planning meeting with Monique the following morning.   I type in the plans for each day, referring back to our co-planned scope and sequence, making notes on what we need to discuss.   Should we try station teaching with 5th period? Does she know of a more complex text we could offer students as an optional extension? How can we make sure 6th period can access the texts we’ve planned? Could we offer a “huddle” for students who want more support during our writing workshop?

II.

With seven and a half hours of arena-style conferences ahead of us, I shove a table in next to Monique’s. I leave a note by the “Hs” that Ms. Hanawalt can be found by Ms. LeTourneau.   A student comes in with his mother and we both lean in, active and equal partners in supporting this student.   The student mentions he is struggling with his independent reading; Monique informs him that because he has an IEP, he has access to an audiobook service through the district. He seems relieved. We all stand to shake hands.

III.

During third period, I stand at the door, fist-bumping students on their way in. Monique is inside, helping students get settled and started on their “Do Now.” I see one student walking slowly towards the door, tears in her eyes. I am scheduled to be the lead teacher for the opening activity, but I peek in, whisper a few words to Monique, and the student and I head out for a walk and talk. Monique takes over the teaching without hesitation.

IV.

We are reading a challenging James Baldwin essay. I give students two options for their learning for the day: if they want to read it out loud and dissect each paragraph, they will stay in my classroom; if they feel ready to dive into discussion, they will walk across the hall to Ms. LeTourneau’s room. Students make a choice and some pack up their stuff and walk to the other room.  The learning continues.

V.

I’m sitting with a student, listening to her concerns about balancing her academics with sports. She is concerned about her academic eligibility and wonders if her IEP allows her to have lower grades and still be eligible. I respond that I don’t think that it does, but that she should check with Ms. LeTourneau because she knows all about IEPs. The student looks at me with raised eyebrows: “She’s a Special Ed teacher? I didn’t even know.”

 

Co-teaching doesn’t feel so new to me anymore, but it definitely is not easy. As in any relationship, Monique and I must invest energy to make our partnership effective.   And sometimes, even though two minds might be better than one, putting those minds together takes extra time and communication. But this collaborative and trusting relationship allows us to serve the needs of our collective classroom community more effectively, while also giving us the flexibility and space to respond to the needs of individual students.

Studio Teaching: A Luxurious and Effective Practice

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Education, Literacy

Eight teachers and three district instructional coaches cram into the meeting room of a local coffee shop, the table full of laptops, large sticky notes, smelly markers, lattes and cell phones.  They pore over documents: teacher plans, student work, excerpts from educational articles.  The facilitator draws out ideas, pushes back when needed, and propels the conversation forward for more than two hours.  The coffee shop owner, familiar with many of these teachers’ faces, asks, “Are you guys working today?”  Yep. Six of these teachers already met the previous week after school in order to create the plans that this group is now tweaking.  So far: 2370 minutes of brain work in order to plan one 50-minute lesson.  Worth it?  Definitely. 

This past month, my co-teacher, an Exceptional Needs Specialist, and I were the “enactment teachers” for our English department’s “Studio” cycle:  teachers within each department take turns hosting other teachers from the department and district instructional coaches for a process that takes several days.  The enactment teacher begins by meeting with a coach to dissect his or her “problem of practice” or “problem of student learning,” a challenge that is almost always evident in the other teachers’ classrooms.  Later the whole team meets to plan a lesson that will address the stated problem, and finally, over an entire school day, the team finalizes the plan, digs deeper into learning about the problem of practice, observes the enactment teacher teach the lesson to one class, debriefs, watches as the lesson is taught once more, and then, after a long day, shares out in a final debrief. 

For this round of Studio, my co-teacher and I identified a problem of practice concerning students working in their “zone of proximal development,” a term defined by psychologist Lev Vygotsky, where students are appropriately challenged and supported at their current level of understanding. We had found that more struggling students often did not take advantage of the supports that we offered, including modified instruction in small-group settings, graphic organizers, one-on-one support, etc.; for students who needed more challenge, we realized that we didn’t always create opportunities for them to go further and deeper, and when we did, sometimes these students either did not realize they were ready for that level of instruction or they didn’t take advantage of the opportunities presented to them. 

Through the Studio planning cycle, our group of educators planned a lesson where students identified their current level of understanding of our learning target for the day, and then based on that self-assessment, chose from a menu of options of how they wanted to learn that day, including one that was more supported and one that was more independent.  The group also encouraged us to choose a more complex text than the one we had originally planned, arguing that with students being more aware of their current skill level and choosing an appropriate level of support, they could be successful at understanding this level of reading. 

My co-teacher and I stand in front of our classroom with 28 pairs of student eyes on us and 11 pairs of adult eyes on them.  The students start off stone cold – no one cracks a smile at my corny jokes.  But they slowly warm up, forgetting about the adults there with their clipboards, marking down their every comment and our every movement.  They tentatively raise their hands as they catch on to the lesson that these 11 people had a part in planning for them.  I smile, impressed with how my students are taking on this complex text, really understanding the heart of the argument. The adults keep their poker faces on, but they are silently cheering students on as they make sense of the reading before them, and quietly jotting down notes for later as they see us make teacher moves that both help and hinder the lesson.   

Studio feels a bit luxurious to me.  All of these brains helping us with one lesson.  All of this energy – and money! – spent to help our department gain a deeper understanding of a problem of student learning that affects us all.  All of the details in the lesson plan, the stuff that I rarely have time to think about, let alone write into a formal template.  All of the debriefing, refining, and reteaching.   

And yet the luxury is worth it.  Definitely.  That day, 84 students went home after reading a text that I had thought would be too much for them. Those 11 teachers went home with new ideas of what to do – and not do – in their own practice to increase student understanding.  And this one teacher, me, left feeling both challenged and affirmed, with new habits of mind and refined practice to take to the next lesson.